Saturday 18 December 2010 05.54 EST
First published on Saturday 18 December 2010 05.54 EST

Lest we forget, the series, as it stood when play ended this morning, was barely beyond the halfway stage, at which point England still held a one-match advantage although Australia were closing in. By the end of this match eight years ago, the outcome of the Ashes had been decided in a mere 11 days while in 2006, a further four days could be added, but the outcome was just the same. Those tens of thousand who then flocked to the MCG on Boxing Day did so not to see a contest but as an audience to humiliation. It was the sort of cricket that might make the Jeremy Kyle Show.

This is different, though. Australia had been repelled in the first Test and themselves humbled in the second. The Australian public, so used to winning ways, was losing faith at a time when Cricket Australia, in hock to India for its existence, was fighting a battle against the behemoth known as the Australian Football League. AFL is stealing the youngsters. Last week, an 18-year-old called Alex Keath made the news not so much for making his first-class debut for Victoria but because in order to play cricket he had turned down an AFL contract with Gold Coast. Why would you do that, they were saying here.

But that is the way it has become. Barely a month ago, on 15 November, in pouring rain and tucked away in a corner of Sydney's Circular Quay, the chairman of the Australian cricket selectors Andrew Hilditch soberly announced a squad of 17 players who might make the team for the first Test. It was nonsensical, a week early with a round of Shield matches and an Australia A game yet to come, but done at the insistence of a spooked CA marketing department who did not wish the publicity given to the impending AFL draft, held three days later, to overshadow the Ashes.

In light of this the prospect of this series being effectively over in Perth once more was too depressing. So for every delivery that Mitchell Johnson thudded into English pads, and every cover drive and pull executed by Mr Bloody Cricket, there was someone in marketing – gelled hair, skinny jeans and pointy shoes – high-fiving round the Melbourne CA offices with a number-crunching bean-counter in his Armani, as prospects for ticket sales in Melbourne and Sydney soared. The great cavernous yuletide MCG will rock now. The two cricketers between them have resurrected a contest that appeared dead in the water.

As Australia began the process of knocking away the England top order for a second time, it was worth remembering that this was a match in which England were most likely to struggle. The groundsman has produced a fantastic surface, producing high-octane cricket. But it is a pitch that is as alien to England batsmen and bowlers, as the swinging, seaming, lower-bounce English surfaces can be, say, to batsmen from the subcontinent. Few come here and prosper when the bounce is strong and the pace fiery, not even the Australian's themselves when they come from the eastern states.

It is significant that it was a born-and-bred Western Australian, Mike Hussey, who brilliantly showed how to bat with a limited but purposeful gameplan (drive through extra cover if full, pull if short, leave otherwise) and a fast-bowling Queenslander transplanted to the state who between them almost singlehandedly transformed fortunes.

England should have known better. They prepared here as the tour began, and although the pitch then was more sluggish they would have had the general idea that wickets come from edges, with good carry, which in turn come from pursuing a full length in search of swing and judicious use of the short ball in order to drive the batsman back. Johnson's spell was of the highest class (although there remains a suspicion that he is oblivious to how, or why, he swung it so prodigiously, and that it had more to do with the preparation of the ball and the easterly wind than any technical changes over the past two weeks) and the most obviously destructive.

But the other Australian seamers understood their lengths: on a bouncy pitch no England batsman, with the exception of Matt Prior, who was unfortunate, was dismissed directly by a short ball rather than as part of a process. And they bowled as a unit.

It was a lesson that was absorbed by Chris Tremlett, who, when they might have chosen a steady but less incisive option in Tim Bresnan, more than justified the faith placed in him by Andy Flower, and claimed seven wickets in the match, with five on day three. England's bowling strategy is built on control, however: decisively, perhaps by getting too caught up in the sledging battle – what should have been nothing but a peripheral sideshow yet transformed into a main event – they broke ranks.

Steven Finn is young and has taken wickets, more than anyone on either side so far, but if England are to go on and win the series, as they most certainly can on friendlier pitches, then they will not be able to afford a bowler who has conceded almost a run a ball through three Tests.